Chapter II
(The Beginning)
“Archimedes” left Norfolk at four the next afternoon, passing down the Elizabeth river into Hampton Roads. Craney Island Lighthouse—thought Dick Watchett—looked like a Swiss Châlet on stilts. The yellow shore was low and flat, with sandy beaches: the Roads full of traffic—Bay steamers, chiefly, and long strings of lighters.
By half past six they were off Cape Henry, and there dropped the pilot.
Vessels bound south keep close to Cape Henry, inside the banks. It is a strange coast, from there down to Cape Hatteras; most of it just a low stretch of beach dividing the inland waters from the ocean: a rather vague limit for so great a continent. That far, Captain Edwardes’s course lay inshore. But south of Cape Hatteras the coast falls away to the westward: at Cape Hatteras, therefore, at three in the morning, “Archimedes” said goodbye to North America, shaping a course for the West Indian island of San Salvador.
That day was fine and clear. The sea and sky were a dark blue, the few clouds white and fleecy. Although it was now late autumn, summer seemed to have returned. For, once they were through the Gulf Stream, the sun, undeterred by cloud or mist, made up for the lateness of the season by the strength a southern latitude lent it. “Archimedes” was alone in the sea, and land newly forgotten—that time when everyone in a ship is at his happiest.
Alone, that is to say, except for the dolphins. For the stem of the ship, cutting through the violet glass, tossed glittering piles of the whitest foam outwards: and deep in the heart of that glass the dancing dolphins were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. A dozen, huge ones, much longer than men; the colour of their backs an olive brown, their sides and bellies a pale and shining green: their shapes the very shape of Speed itself. The pointed nose, in front of the swelling forehead, opened the water perfectly; and it slid together again behind the throbbing tail as if they had been nothing.
Mostly they danced in twos, swinging from side to side of the stem like two people skating together: then crossing, one over, the other under: then rolling over and over sideways, a flash of greenish silver deep under the water: rising to the surface, so that the back fin cut the air with a white plume: leaping into the air like powerful mermaids too happy to lie still: leaping, twisting on to their backs as they leapt, sometimes two, sometimes three, or four or five together. Two would suddenly swing away, and altogether leave the ship: two more from nowhere cross the bows and join in the heavenly water-play.
At first Sukie had blazed in Dick’s mind, lighting every part of it: but now already, after two days, she had contracted and receded like the opening by which you have entered a tunnel: turned more unearthly bright than the broad day, but very distant and small and clear. Yet now, as he watched the dolphins, for a moment light seemed to come back over his whole mind, gently flooding all its dark places, and then fading in a mood of pleasurable sadness.
Again that night he saw something very beautiful: something seldom seen (except in the China Seas): a patch of ocean so phosphorescent that it cast a glow into the sky before they reached it. As they came to it, the whole water sparkled like stars, and everything that moved in it was sheathed in cold flame. Deep beneath it some fish sent out a rotating light, like a lighthouse.
It was a rare and magnificent thing. But it did not move him as the naked dolphins had done.
II
It took them four days to reach San Salvador.
They seemed now to have passed through the little oasis of summer: it was succeeded by a grey, south-easterly swell, and a fresh breeze; and the weather was cloudy, with occasional showers. But there was no reason to expect really bad weather: the hurricane season had finished at least a fortnight ago, nor was the swell of the long, oily type that presages a tropical storm, nor were the clouds of an ominous appearance. It was invigorating weather, that is all.
Ship’s routine was again in full swing. At meals no one spoke to the Captain unless first addressed. Captain Edwardes was not privately a forbidding person, or even an impressive one; but his office was.
Captain Edwardes had not that naturally sovereign look which many sailors wear. He was a small man, rather cherubic, but dark. His eyes were bright, but it looked the brightness of excitement rather than of strength; and if his position had let him, one could see he would have been very affable. He was a native of Carmarthenshire: and for a Norfolk man, like Dick Watchett, it was anyhow difficult to revere a Welshman. The Chief Officer, on the other hand, Mr. Buxton, hailed from his own county: Dick would secretly have rather seen him in command.
Mr. Foster, too, the Second Officer—a solid, North-of-England man—he also looked a highly efficient seaman.
But an unprejudiced physiognomist, looking round the saloon for someone on whom to place implicit reliance, would almost certainly have chosen the small, lean Devonian, the supernumerary Mr. Rabb, with his steady and brilliant blue eyes, and his firm jaw, his look rather of a naval officer than a mercantile one.
There was only one unpleasing thing about Mr. Rabb: his nails were always bitten right down to the quick.
It was two in the morning when they picked up the light on San Salvador. They left it ten or twelve miles to the eastward, passing between that island and Rum Cay, whose twin white cliffs just showed in the first of the morning light. They were now well among the islands, though keeping clear of all of them: the blue tower on Bird Rock was abeam soon after breakfast. The weather was still showery, with a moderate wind and swell: and for the rest of the day they sighted nothing, till they saw the tall tower on Castle Island at four in the afternoon.
Dick had never seen the West Indies before: it was disappointing to see now nothing of all those halcyon isles but an occasional light-house, or a low smudge on the sea, through rain.
At nine in the evening they were to the eastward of Cape Maysi, the easternmost extremity of Cuba, and entered into that broad channel between Cuba and Hayti which is known as the Windward Passage. The Cape itself lies too low to be seen in the darkness: but the dim tiers of the Purial mountains rose one behind the other against the lighter sky.
It was after five the next morning, and just getting light, when they passed to the east of Navassa Island; a barren limestone sponge, between Jamaica and Hayti. That was the last land they would see before they reached Colon, the entrance to the Panama Canal (where Mr. Rabb was to join his own ship). Ahead of them lay a short passage across the empty Caribbean sea—a passage of about forty-eight hours.
All that day it blew fresh from the north-east, and the black sea was rough. But what are a rough sea and half a gale to a fine modern vessel like the “Archimedes”? Enough to show her good qualities, not more: enough to prevent life on board her from being enervating. The wind whistled in the wires, and spray swept the foredeck, occasionally slapping some injudicious Chinaman as he tried to cross the well in his papery cotton clothes. It was enough to make Dick Watchett, on the bridge, feel himself a mariner; to blow away the lugubrious notion that a sailor’s life nowadays was a process of cramming for examinations, and counting groceries.
Towards the evening it was blowing a whole gale. That was the maximum that one was likely to get, now the hurricane season was past. The seas were large enough to set “Archimedes” pitching and rolling; and if there had been passengers on board they would have lain mute and unsavoury in cabins, or half-frozen in deck chairs and lacking their usual good looks: or (a few of them) would have walked very fast up and down the deck, greeting each other heartily with hard grins, like diminished vikings. But there were no passengers on board the “Archimedes,” not even pilgrims; and the only person who was sick was Thomas, and he did it decently and privately in the heart of the foghorn.
The reason for this wind was apparent when the wireless weather-report was received. A “tropical disturbance” was centred some hundreds of miles to the eastward: in other words, a circular system of gales round a central focus of low pressure, such as might, earlier in the year,
have quickened to hurricane-force.
But the report described this one as of slight intensity and small area, and only shifting very slowly to the westward. In the records of the last fifty years, no hurricane of any magnitude has occurred in the month of November: the depressions always fill up and the wind dies away. And this was actually the middle of November. Nevertheless, caution being the watchword of the Sage Line, Captain Edwardes deflected his southerly course somewhat to the westward, to keep right out of its way. Not that a hurricane was remotely likely: not that a ship like “Archimedes” would care two hoots for a hurricane if it came. But however small the risk of danger, it is a navigator’s duty to render it even smaller.
During this night the gale should blow itself out; and during the next night they were due in Colon. A slight rise in the barometer, which occurred late in the evening, proved conclusively that the gale must shortly be left behind.
But no: at six in the morning the barometer began to fall again, and the wind to blow really quite hard. To have continued trying to pass to the westward of the bad weather would no longer have been prudent, since there were reefs that way; and it is even more important to keep away from reefs than to keep away from winds. Colon was not very far off now, and the weather-reports from Colon offered gentle breezes and fine weather to anyone who would call and fetch them. So the new course set was south true, in order to get clear of the small area of disturbance in which it was quite plain they had somehow got involved.
At eight o’clock that morning Mr. Buxton decided to go round the ship, to tidy up and make all snug; just in case they were in for a bit of a dusting. It was a routine precaution, nothing else: one does not, in a vessel like the “Archimedes,” adopt the sort of measures—such as fixing hatch-protectors—one would adopt in a more vulnerable little craft.
But he found that Mr. Rabb had been before him, and had already made all snug off his own bat. Nevertheless he went round himself too: not that he did not trust Mr. Rabb, but the responsibility after all was his, as Chief Officer. He found nothing to better: he could only admire the thoroughness and efficiency with which the job had been done. “He’s a good officer,” he ruminated; and then found himself adding, he hardly knew why, “though a queer fish.”
While Mr. Buxton was attending to the immediate situation, Captain Edwardes did some hard and rather perplexed thinking. For it was now necessary for him to foresee, in accordance with certain meteorological rules, what the disturbance was going to do.
The days of Conrad’s “Typhoon” are passed: the days when hurricanes pounced on shipping as unexpectedly as a cat on mice. For one thing, the mice know more than they used to know of the cat’s anatomy, of the rules which govern its motion—and in addition to that, the cat has been belled.
By the turn of the century, meteorological science had already advanced a long way. The movements of these storms had been charted and studied over a long period, and their uniformity had been found to be extraordinary. So every seaman was taught what paths West Indian hurricanes usually follow, and where the invisible obstacles lie which tend to deflect those paths towards the north. Thus he could generally avoid running into a hurricane altogether. But if he should find himself on the fringe of a disturbance, there were further rules which enabled him to calculate, by observing the barometer and the wind’s change of direction, where the centre of the vortex lay at the moment; and so, whether he was in a quadrant where he would be sucked in, or buffeted out: in what direction to make his escape.
For, just as a rapidly-spinning top only creeps across the nursery floor, so, though the velocity of the hurricane wind itself is huge, the shifting of the whole system is not very fast. It seldom averages more than twelve miles an hour, while the storm is intense: and is sometimes only three or four.
And yet, sometimes ships used still to get caught. Some slow-moving sailing-vessel, or laden steamer: either an eccentricity of the storm’s motion trapped her into a false move, or else she did not discover her danger quickly enough to get away. Now, however, with the advent of wireless, there is little danger even of that. For now, when a hurricane is abroad, all shipping in its neighbourhood keeps tag on it, and telegraphs data regarding it to a shore station. Thus, be its behaviour never so eccentric, the meteorologist on shore is able to watch, as plainly as with his direct eyes, every movement of the hurricane and every variation of its strength: and the least tendency to diverge from the path and the velocity forecast can be immediately observed: and the news, twice a day, can be broadcast back to shipping.
That is really what I mean by “belling the cat.” You can hear the bell tinkle, twice a day. You can hear the hurricane’s approach before it is anywhere near you.
It is usually fixed things, such as banana trees, one hears of nowadays as having been damaged by a hurricane: not shipping. Ships (which can run) are safer in those latitudes than government offices (which cannot).
III
The thing to remember about the atmosphere is its size. A little air is so thin, so fluid; in small amounts it can slip about so rapidly, that the conditions which give rise to a hurricane cannot be reproduced on a small scale. In trying to explain a hurricane, therefore, one must describe the large thing itself, not a model of it. For it is only when one thinks of the hugeness of a parcel of air on the world, the big distance it may have to shift to equalise some atmospheric difference, that one can realise how slow and immobile, regarded on a large scale, the air is.
It happens like this. The air above a warm patch of sea, somewhere near the Canaries, is warmed: so it will tend to be pushed up and replaced by the colder, weightier air around. In a warm room it would rise in a continuous gentle stream, and be replaced by a gentle draught under the door—no excitement. But on a large scale it cannot: that is what is different. It rises in a single lump, as if it were encased in a gigantic balloon—being actually encased in its own comparative sluggishness. Cold air rushes in underneath not as a gentle draught but as a great wind, owing to the bodily lifting of so great a bulk of air.
Air moving in from all round towards a central point: and in the middle, air rising: that is the beginning. Then two things happen. The turning of the earth[1] starts the system turning: not fast at first, but in a gentle spiral. And the warm air which has risen, saturated with moisture from the surface of the sea, cools. Cooling, high up there, its moisture spouts out of it in rain. Now, when the water in air condenses, it releases the energy that held it there, just as truly as the explosion of petrol releases energy. Millions of horse-power up there loose. As in a petrol-motor, that energy is translated into motion: up rises the boundless balloon still higher, faster spins the vortex.
Thus the spin of the Earth is only the turn of the crank-handle which starts it: the hurricane itself is a vast motor, revolved by the energy generated by the condensation of water from the rising air.
And then consider this. Anything spinning fast enough tends to fly away from the centre—or at any rate, like a planet round the sun, reaches a state of balance where it cannot fly inwards. The wind soon spins round the centre of a hurricane so fast it can no longer fly into that centre, however vacuous it is. Mere motion has formed a hollow pipe, as impervious as if it were made of something solid.
That is why it is often calm at the centre of a hurricane: the wind actually cannot get in.
So this extraordinary engine, fifty miles or more wide, built of speed-hardened air, its vast power generated by the sun and by the shedding of rain, spins westward across the floor of the Atlantic, often for weeks together, its power mounting as it goes. It is only when its bottom at last touches dry land (or very cold air) that the throttle is closed; no more moist air can be sucked in, and in a few days, or weeks at most, it spreads and dies.
IV
But in November the conditions are seldom right, in those latitudes, for all the several stages of the forming of a true hurricane. The process occasionally starts: but then it dissipates, it dies, it becomes a me
re “depression” (most depressions that reach England are really such dead or aborted hurricanes).
The first weather-reports evidently expected that this disturbance would be no exception. But the “Archimedes” had already left far behind the prognosticated path of the storm. Such storms, moreover, usually re-curve towards the right-hand, not the left. Yes, by every rule of the game they should be clear of all trouble by now.
But at nine o’clock on that November morning of 1929, the strength of the wind was found to be still increasing; so it was plain that something quite unusual was happening. First, this was developing into a true hurricane; and second, it was not at all where it was thought by the pundits to be. Either it had changed its course prodigiously, and in the wrong direction, or else—the notion flashed through Captain Edwardes’s mind—this was not a single hurricane but a twin: he was being rapidly overtaken by a second and far more powerful vortex, not the recorded vortex at all.
He had told his chief officer, an hour before, that if the barometer continued to fall he should heave-to. The ship could thresh on, surely; but there was nothing to gain by subjecting it to such unnecessary strain. Better point her nose into the wind, keep her engines running just hard enough to hold her there, and ride it out. For the process should not be long; a terrific gale for a few hours from one quarter; then a short time of calm while the centre passed over: and then the wind from the other quarter, gradually weakening as the storm left them behind.
At nine o’clock therefore, as the barometer still fell, and the steady direction of the wind showed that they were in the direct track of the storm, Captain Edwardes headed her round north-east and north, with her nose splitting the gale, to ride it out.